Thursday, December 28, 2006

I've expanded my notes on events of the past three years, and improving the connections to the particular peoples I've been considering. I've created a couple of new pages to break up events of the last year into quarters. Rather than work extensively with whole groups of peoples as I've been doing before, I decided to go back to an earlier approach and add one nation at a time. The three most populous nations of the world are China, India, and the United States, so I've been working on getting current events connected. These were most of the way there already, so it wasn't too hard, but getting the new quarter year pages all the way down to these specific nations will take a few more rounds of development. The USA page is getting big enough that it's going to have to be broken up. I want to start including individual state pages, as well as regional pages, covering more than one state. I will eventually be doing the same with China and India, but this isn't an immediate goal. I've also made some progress on the social structure and change pages, and on connecting these to history and peoples of the world. There will be a couple of new and expanded connections in the next set of updates. I had planned to do more work with institutions and culture, but I'm going to have to put these off until tomorrow, at least.

Enough already. My approaches to building the knowledge base have a tendency to become overly rote, structured, and mechanical. There is enough of a base now, that I can start with a more lively approach. I got a number of pages started in history, but had a hard time getting out of that subject into other areas. So, I tried something new. I was told by one reviewer that my knowledge base had more outline than content, and that's still the case. So, it's time to start adding live content. A listing of historical events in the US for the year 2006 is almost an insignificant fragment, but it's enough to prompt attention to a whole array of connected subjects. Going back a year to 2005 may give a little perspective to these events. I might also separate out those events that deal specifically with the United States from the general mass of events of the year. I might consider local regions within the US. I might work on another nation...China is next on my list of targets. I might work on government, which has been sadly neglected. I might also do more work on culture, and connect it to the year 2006, or the United States. In any case, I have some live information to work with, and a variety of possible directions to go. More later.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Besides connecting to the present, I was looking at updating the connections of historical periods to other areas, which led right back into the whole subject of history. The main history page is about as well developed as I can get until other areas are themselves better developed.I probably won't be doing much work with Prehistory until I've finished the Antiquity section. I have a new page for Antiquity, the 4th Millennium BC, which is not much more than a stub at present. For the most part, Classical and Medieval history is being set aside, except that in the Late Medieval period, I have added a page for the 13th century. The main Modern history page is also about as well developed as I can get it for now. In the 18th century, I have added a mid-18th century page. The 19th century has been mostly set aside for now, and the main 20th century page is mostly abaout as well developed as I can get it for now. In the late-mid 20th century, I have added a late 1970s page. The Late 20th century is also about as well developed as is prudent for now. I did some work in the early 2000s, mostly by going through with basic events for 2006. I have done little work in the Future this round. For the most part, before I can make real progress in history, I need to do work in Sociology, and in order to do this, it involves first connecting it back to history.I haven't yet added pages in this area, so far, I've just been adding a few cross-links. Peoples of the world are first and easiest to work with, and the main page is alread linked to history as far as is prudent for now. The primary focus has been in Western Civilization, and mostly I've been reviewing where I am. I see that a a few important areas are rather undeveloped and I could expand the discussion of their history some, in future development rounds. I've also been reviewing Asiatic peoples and in this area, there are a lot of unused developments in the Middle East. However, I already know from previous attempts that other areas of Asiatic peoples will need to be come before this.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

In the past couple of days, I've been working on history. In accordance with my development program, I got as far as adding a new page on antiquity, the 3rd millennium BC, then decided that I was really not that much interested in antiquity, or late medieval times, or the 18th century. I switched to another approach I have been using, one of starting from the present and working backward.

Wikipedia is doing well at keeping an ongoing, up-to-date chronicle of events, which is something I have difficulty with. This allows me to keep almost up-to-date, something I have difficulty with when the only source of current events is daily news. The last 20 years is now split into 5-year pages, and I have a page for the current year and each of the last two.

I would like to narrow the gap between when events occur and interpretation of them, by being able to fit major current events into historical context as soon as possible. These new pages bring me a step closer to that goal.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

It's been three months since I last posted to this blog. Development of the Sapience Knowledge Base has continued, but I haven't been commenting on it. I've recently switched back to a top=down approach to development of the knowledge base, since work at higher levels tends to promote the development of lower level details more than the other way around.

The site map has been updated, with most active non-science pages now linked. The "About" page has been rearranged. There is also a page describing 3VL I mentioned earlier this year. In the past couple of months, there has been a burst of activity, with new pages in almost every section, and the past several month's worth of revisions and updated have now been published to the web. I expect to do more updates as I go along.